How the Baby-Sitters Club Does Money: Mary Anne

Mary Anne married Logan.

It was a shock to everybody. A pleasant shock, or at least a “let’s pretend we think this is a good idea” shock, and in fact their wedding, which took place during the summer after Mary Anne’s freshman year of college, was the last time the entire BSC was together.

They’re still married. They still live in Stoneybrook, or technically just outside of Stoneybrook, in an old farmhouse that they remodeled together, nearly from the ground up.

They’re also financially independent.

They didn’t plan this, when they got married; but Mary Anne knew how quickly you could lose things that were important to you. She didn’t want to wait for things. You could lose what you had while you waited.

So they married young, and Mary Anne immediately began pitching the idea of designing a fire-proof home. It couldn’t be done, as it turned out, but her enthusiasm led her towards architecture and then into construction, dragging Logan with her the entire way. (Logan didn’t mind. Logan likes Mary Anne.)

Mary Anne at first thought she’d do the actual building work, but her nerves were still too flinchy and she wasn’t any good on a ladder or with a power drill. Her organizational skills were what made her valuable, and by the time she was 32 she was the Executive Vice President of Operations at Stoneybrook Construction, pulling in six figures and giving speeches at high school Career Days about being a woman in a male-dominated field. (She hates giving the speeches, and takes beta-blockers beforehand.)

Logan is the stay-at-home dad. They had their two children right away — Mary Anne knew that life was short and you couldn’t wait for what you wanted — which meant Mary Anne was done with the infant and toddler stage of life by the time she was 25 and was able to focus full time on her work. Her focus on going after what she wanted as fast as possible put her family on the track to financial stability a good five years ahead of her peers.

That was Logan’s doing, really; he was the one cooking the meals, balancing the budget, and setting up auto-deposits into their savings accounts while Mary Anne spent long hours at the office. He was the one who first read Your Money or Your Life after taking the kids to the public library, and the first person to suggest that they could become financially independent. He began switching their funds from savings into investments and reading early retirement blogs.

They ended up hitting F1 after eight years, and they did it on a single income. (Having Logan take care of nearly all of the domestic work helped things considerably.) Both of their kids are in college; the oldest one is graduating this year. Mary Anne could stop working any time she wanted, and the two of them could enjoy decades of retired life together, but she isn’t going to. She’s in her prime, and she is finally truly happy.

Previously: Claudia

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